17 September 2026
Beneath the vast canopy of the Western Hajj Terminal in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a space built for movement towards Makkah and shaped by the passage of pilgrims from across the world, the Islamic Arts Biennale is developing a different way of approaching histories that have rarely fitted neatly within the boundaries of museums. When it returns in November 2027, historical objects, contemporary practice, architecture and scholarship will once again occupy the same terrain, but the ambition of this third edition extends further: towards reconsidering how Islamic arts are understood, where their histories are encountered and whose knowledge shapes their telling.
Opening on 1 November 2027 at the Western Hajj Terminal of King Abdulaziz International Airport, the third edition will be led by Alain Fouad George, Idries Trevathan, William Robinson and Nada Raza. With an expanded AlMadar programme and the return of the AlMusalla Prize, the Biennale builds on questions developed over its first two editions while placing greater emphasis on research, exchange, and forms of knowledge that continue beyond the exhibition itself.
At the centre of this development is a question that has accompanied the Biennale since its inception: what do we mean when we speak of ‘Islamic art’? The term encompasses cultures across continents, languages, histories, and periods, yet its institutional and art-historical definitions have often been shaped by systems of collecting, classification, and scholarship developed in European and North American museums and universities. The Biennale has sought to complicate these boundaries by placing historical objects alongside contemporary commissions and bringing material culture into conversation with faith, architecture, ritual and lived experience.
Increasingly important to this proposition is AlMadar, or ‘The Orbit’, the Biennale’s collaborative initiative connecting institutions with significant collections of Islamic art. Rather than functioning solely as a mechanism for bringing objects to Jeddah, AlMadar is developing into a broader platform encompassing exhibitions, research, digital resources, public programmes and institutional exchange.
This matters because the histories gathered under the broad designation of Islamic art do not belong to a single geography. Manuscripts, textiles, ceramics, architecture, scientific knowledge and religious objects emerged through centuries of movement between communities extending from West Africa and the Mediterranean to Central, South and Southeast Asia. Objects now separated by national borders and museum collections were often produced within far more interconnected intellectual, commercial and religious worlds.
For 2027, AlMadar is expected to expand this work further, placing greater emphasis on what can be produced between editions rather than only what can be assembled for an exhibition. In doing so, it tests whether a biennale can function not simply as a temporary site of display, but as a space for sustained scholarship and the circulation of knowledge.
Architecture forms another part of this expanding enquiry. The AlMusalla Prize returns for its second edition, inviting architects to reconsider the musalla — a space for prayer and gathering — as a contemporary architectural proposition. Through questions of material, sustainability, adaptability and communal use, the competition moves the Biennale’s enquiry beyond the representation of Islamic culture towards the physical spaces through which faith continues to be practised.
Its first edition resulted in On Weaving, designed by EAST Architecture Studio in collaboration with engineers AKT II and artist Rayyane Tabet. Constructed from material derived from local date-palm waste and drawing on regional weaving traditions, the structure served as an operational prayer space during the 2025 Biennale. The return of the prize in 2027 establishes architecture not as an ancillary element of the exhibition, but as part of its investigation into the relationship between inheritance and contemporary life.
The setting for these enquiries is significant. Despite being organised by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation, the Islamic Arts Biennale takes place not in Diriyah but at Jeddah’s Western Hajj Terminal. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and completed in 1981, the terminal remains an important point of passage for pilgrims travelling towards Makkah and Madinah.
Jeddah has long connected the Arabian Peninsula to Africa and the wider Indian Ocean world through pilgrimage, commerce, and migration. Holding the Biennale within this landscape gives movement a meaning beyond curatorial metaphor: many of the cultural and intellectual histories it examines developed through precisely these routes of encounter.
The Biennale began here in 2023 with Awwal Bait (First House), under the artistic direction of South African architect Sumayya Vally. Taking the Ka’bah as its conceptual point of orientation, the exhibition was structured around Qiblah — the direction Muslims face in prayer — and Hijrah, understood through migration and movement. Historical artefacts appeared alongside contemporary works and commissions, while prayer, sound, ritual and collective experience complicated the distinction between objects displayed as ‘Islamic art’ and the cultures within which they continue to have meaning.
Its second edition, And All That Is In Between, followed in 2025 under artistic directors Julian Raby, Amin Jaffer and Abdul Rahman Azzam, with Saudi artist Muhannad Shono as Curator of Contemporary Art. The scale expanded considerably, bringing together more than 500 historical objects and contemporary works across five exhibition halls and outdoor spaces. More than 30 international institutions participated alongside contemporary artists, with 29 new commissions.
The geographical breadth was notable. Collections came from institutions including the Louvre and the Victoria and Albert Museum, as well as the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, the National Heritage Institute in Tunis, institutions in Türkiye and Indonesia, and the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research in Timbuktu.
Timbuktu is particularly relevant when considering Africa’s position within these histories. Islam has shaped intellectual, artistic and architectural traditions across North and West Africa, the Sahel, the Horn and the East African coast for centuries. Pilgrimage routes connected African scholars and communities to Makkah and Madinah, while trade and intellectual exchange linked African cities to cultural centres across the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean.
Seen through these histories, Africa is not peripheral to the story of Islamic art but embedded within its formation. Yet museum classifications have often separated these intertwined histories into categories such as African art, Middle Eastern art, and Islamic art. AlMadar offers one way to test those divisions by placing material held in geographically dispersed collections within a shared field of enquiry.
The Islamic Arts Biennale remains a young institution. It is also developing within Saudi Arabia’s substantial state-supported investment in culture and the country’s broader ambition to establish itself as an international centre for art, heritage and cultural exchange. Its expanding scale and reach therefore need to be understood within that wider transformation as much as through the exhibitions themselves.
Across its first two editions, however, a discernible trajectory has emerged. Awwal Bait established a proposition in 2023 by approaching Islamic art through faith, orientation and lived experience. And All That Is In Between broadened the historical and contemporary scope in 2025. The forthcoming edition appears to take the next step, asking how the scholarship generated around the Biennale might live beyond the exhibition.
When it opens in 2027, the question will therefore not simply be what the Islamic Arts Biennale chooses to exhibit, but whether its evolving model can generate different ways of understanding the histories encompassed by the term ‘Islamic art’ — and reconsider where, and by whom, those histories are written.
The 2027 Curators
Alain Fouad George is I.M. Pei Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at the University of Oxford, founding Director of the Lusail Institute in Doha and a Fellow of the British Academy. An author and scholar, his research centres on the art and architecture of the Umayyad era, early manuscripts of the Qur’an and the history of Arabic calligraphy. He previously directed Oxford’s Khalili Research Centre and taught for a decade at the University of Edinburgh and for two years in Beirut. The Lusail Institute, a new Qatar Museums initiative developed with Georgetown University in Qatar and part of the future Lusail Museum, advances research and debate on art and material culture, with particular attention to power, cultural exchange, and transformation between the Middle East, Europe, and the Indian Ocean.
Idries Trevathan has worked across Europe and the Muslim world for more than two decades, focusing particularly on reviving and presenting Islamic art as a living tradition. As former Chief Curator at Ithra in Dhahran, he played an instrumental role in establishing its museum as a centre for Islamic arts and culture, building its collection from its inception and curating major exhibitions. His wider practice encompasses large-scale cultural projects, conferences and documentary film, and he has written and edited several books on Islamic art and culture.
William Robinson is an Islamic art specialist with more than four decades of experience. During three decades at Christie’s, he headed its Islamic Art and Carpet departments and subsequently its international World Art group. Since leaving Christie’s in 2022, he has worked independently in research and advisory roles and serves on the advisory board of Berlin’s Museum of Islamic Art. Robinson previously curated the Homage section of the 2025 Islamic Arts Biennale.
Nada Raza is a curator and researcher whose work explores transcultural connections across the Indian Ocean, particularly between the Arabian Peninsula and South Asia. She is Director of the Alserkal Arts Foundation and previously served as Artistic Director of Dubai’s Ishara Art Foundation, following curatorial roles at Tate Modern and Tate Research Centre: Transnational, where she contributed to the development of Tate’s international collections with a focus on South Asia. Her curatorial practice spans exhibitions, site-specific public art, residencies, research and performance, with recent projects addressing urbanism and migration across South and West Asia.
The Islamic Biennale opens on 1 November 2027 at the Western Hajj Terminal of King Abdulaziz International Airport, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
